Dear friends,
Over the past few weeks I have been listening to some podcast stories while walking the dog or doing exercise. It’s been a delight to delve into the world of creative imagination again but it has also made me sharply aware that the world we live in is lost and confused. Couple this with some recent hospital trips to visit people who are in the last moments of life and I have come to a fresh appreciation that many are searching for something that is clearly available in plain sight.
In Lif-e.af/ter we meet a man who desperately wants to reconnect with his dead wife. He gets through his days only by listening to old voice messages and cannot cope when they are disconnected. Through the story he is offered entirely fictional pathways of hope to find everlasting life and in his grief and pain he is more than willing to risk it all to take them.
In Limetown a whole community just disappears; 327 people, into thin air. An investigative reporter tries to tell the story of what happened and as she does she discovers a web of pain, deceit and lies that flow from a lost utopia. Survivors were promised a life that was to provide meaning and a connection to the afterlife but what they found was vacuous and dissatisfying.
In the hospital, I am reassured by a person I visit that no one can know what lies beyond and all that matters is that you’ll be reunited with loved ones later. Noting the irony that he somehow knows what he claims no one can know, I ask if he would like to meet the man who has been beyond and returned. He’s disappointed when I tell him the man’s name is Jesus.
Our temporary and finite existence as humans appears to me to be increasingly present in our minds at this time. Over time you can track movements in human thought through fictional writing (think George Orwell’s writing) and whether it is coincidence or not, I feel that this is the time when people are searching for something permanent. Searching for life beyond this life. Searching for something that can make sense of the way life is now.
That something is Jesus. And he is clearly available in plain sight. And yet, people ignore him.
Jesus promises permanence.
Jesus promises life after.
Jesus promises meaning in life.
The Jesus you know is the Jesus the searchers around us need to know.
He’s lord of the world even though the citizens of the world appoint their own kings and rulers.
He loves the world even though the citizens of the world ignore him.
If you’re a citizen of heaven, please take the opportunity to point someone to Jesus this week. Your friends are lost and confused without him and he’s available in plain sight.
In Christ
Nigel